Tonight was the first meeting of 2009 for the Charlotte, NC area CEREC Study Club, which I founded shortly after I took possession of my CEREC 3D CAD/CAM system on December 31st, 2007. (If you’re unfamiliar with the terms, CAD/CAM means “Computer-Aided Design/Computer-Aided Milling.”) It was really a very exciting meeting (ok, most people probably wouldn’t find it really exciting, but we’re a bunch of dentists, after all, who happen to be kind of geeky and like hi-tech tools in our office which happen to provide really awesome results for our patients), as the manufacturer (Sirona USA) just recently released a tremendous new upgrade, the CEREC AC Bluecam, which uses a range of improvements in both hardware and software to drastically increase the system’s speed.
Given the cost of the new unit, and since my CEREC 3D is only 13 months old, I’m not going to be introducing this new version to our office this year. The one we have, the CEREC 3D, is still an excellent system, and we regularly enjoy giving our patients the great experience of single-visit all-ceramic crowns and onlays with it. This means no temporary restorations, no second visit getting numb, no metal, practically no sensitivity afterwards……there’s really no downside.
Along with the new system, Sirona USA is launching another terrific innovation that will also benefit patients, and it’s called CerecConnect. The difference is this: with CEREC, we can create 1-4 units of crowns and/or onlays in a row fairly easily, and even do all of them in 1 visit. However, doing a full arch (all the top or all the bottom teeth) is extremely difficult and typically requires great expertise and advanced training, and it will still usually take 2 visits. In addition, the regular CEREC can’t do things like bridges. With CerecConnect, however, we will still be able to completely eliminate using those gunky impressions that NOONE likes, because we’ll take a digital image of the teeth and then just email it to the lab. How cool is that!?!?
I have a number of recent cases that I plan on posting here in the near future once I get the patient education videos completed. You’ll love what CAD/CAM can do in dentistry, for YOU! The digitization of dentistry is proceeding full-speed ahead, and the benefits are simply tremendous.
